A network of radio devices connected to the Internet, including mobile systems, Wi-Fi terminals and Internet of Things sensors may comprise thousands to millions of connection points or devices distributed over large areas, even countries. With this vast amount of different radios, it is essential to be able to coordinate radio traffic by selecting suitable radio channel etc. Possible solutions range from fully centralized controlled allocation to fully distributed solutions without any centralized control.
Wi-Fi networks are installed in 25% of homes all around the world. 40% of these are located in cities where people live in multi-dwelling-units where interference between networks is a big problem. It is unknown to many that their Wi-Fi network can work significantly better by simply changing their operating channel thereby minimizing mutual interference between the networks. When doing this, the channel with the least interference is normally chosen.
The most popular ISM band (Industrial, Scientific and Medical), where unlicensed operations are permitted, is at 2.4 GHz having only 3 non-overlapping channels. Selecting the channel with the least interference is known as a local optimization of the network. A significantly better solution is to include other networks in an assessment, known as global optimization of the network. Several methods for doing this have been proposed.
The most common method is to solve this by creating a conflict graph. Finding a solution to this is however hard, because a complete overview of all neighbouring Wi-Fi networks within an interference range is needed. In the following, Wi-Fi networks within an interference range are called a group. In mobile networks, this overview is available and channel selection is a result of careful radio planning, considering the best location of the base stations, antennas etc.
The following is a list of publications describing different problems and solution related to channel and power allocation of wireless network devices.    U.S. Pat. No. 7,986,660 B2; Channel allocation for communication system.    US 20100091731 A1; Channel allocation method and apparatus for wireless communication networks.    WO 2013152305 A1; Interference management and network performance optimization in dense Wi-Fi networks.    WO 2014025822 A2; Dynamic channel selection algorithms for interference management in Wi-Fi networks.    U.S. Pat. No. 9,131,391 B2; Dynamic channel selection algorithms for interference management in WIFI networks.    US 20150100619 A1; Dual channel Wi-Fi for congested WLANs with asymmetric traffic loads.    U.S. Pat. No. 8,982,907 B2; Large-scale peer-to-peer discovery mechanism for frequency allocation.    U.S. Pat. No. 8,923,225 B2; Cognitive Wi-Fi radio network.    US 20140313890 A1; Profiling Wi-Fi channel congestion and interference to optimize channel selection.    CN 104066188 A; K-screening neighbour channel allocation method based on node degree.    WO 2013066314 A1; Profiling Wi-Fi channel congestion and interference to optimize channel selection.    US 20130272285 A1; Interference management and network performance optimization in dense Wi-Fi networks.    U.S. Pat. No. 8,059,593 B2; Distributed channel allocation method and wireless mesh network therewith.    U.S. Pat. No. 9,066,251 B2; Global and local optimization of Wi-Fi access points.    US 20060072602 A1; Method and apparatus for least congested channel scan for wireless access points.    U.S. Pat. No. 9,258,768 B2; Method for using legacy Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi P2P simultaneously.    US 20060072602 A1; Method and apparatus for least congested channel scan for wireless access points;    U.S. Pat. No. 9,258,768 B2; Method for using legacy Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi P2P simultaneously;    US 20100091731 A1; Channel allocation method and apparatus for wireless communication networks;    Surachai Chieochan, Ekram Hossain, and Jeffrey Diamond: “Channel Assignment Schemes for Infrastructure-Based 802.11 WLANs: A Survey”, IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, Vol. 12, No. 1, First Quarter 2010.    J. Riihijarvi, M. Petrova, and P. Mahonen, J. A. Barbosa, “Performance Evaluation of Automatic Channel Assignment Mechanism for IEEE 802.11 Based on Graph Coloring,” in Proc. 17th Annual IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications, pp. 1-5, September 2006.    Arunesh Mishra, Suman Banerjee, William Arbaugh: “Weighted Coloring based Channel Assignment for WLANs” ACM SIGMOBILE Mobile Computing, 2005    F. Rahimian, S. Girdzijauskas, A. H. Payberah, and S. Haridi, “Vitis: A Gossip-based Hybrid Overlay for Internet-scale Publish/Subscribe,” in Proc. of the 25rd IEEE International Symposium on Parallel & Distributed Processing (IPDPS'11). IEEE, May 2011, pp. 746-757.    M. Jelasity and O. Babaoglu, “T-man: Gossip-based overlay topology management,” in Engineering Self-Organising Systems, ser. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, S. Brueckner, G. Marzo Serugendo, D. Hales, and F. Zambonelli, Eds. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2006, vol. 3910, pp. 1-15.    Magnus Skjegstad, Brage Ellingsæter, Torleiv Maseng, Jon Crowcroft and Øyvind Kure, “Large-Scale Distributed Internet-based Discovery Mechanism for Dynamic Spectrum Allocation”, 2014, IEEE DySPAN 2014.
Wi-Fi access points are usually installed in private homes at a convenient place with omnidirectional antennas, and in an uncoordinated manner, resulting in competition with other neighbouring radios for resources in the ISM frequency band. It is common to include clients such as laptops, pads, mobiles connected by radio to Wi-Fi access points in the channel assignment, but this should be done in a joint network manner and not as an isolated task within the local radio network.
Known solutions for avoiding conflicts in Wi-Fi networks is letting one access point acts as a master and coordinator, but not in a peer-to-peer (P2P) fashion over the backhaul network as is the case in the current invention.
Using a radio channel as a control channel is well known. A better way is however to use the backhaul network, since the capacity for handling control messages is large, and communications is possible even if the radio channel is unavailable.
Internet Service Providers normally change the IP address of all of their private customers every month. This is done for giving their customers anonymity. In order to ensure that the relation between the location of the devices and their IP address provided by the peer-to-peer protocol can be acquired by a third party, each device may select a partner device randomly. This selection can work asynchronously among the devices. A device can also be selected to represent several devices and must announce its current capacity for running a software agent on behalf of other devices at random locations. The IP address of the access point can not be inferred by IP address of the other devices.
The assignment of a radio spectrum of today's radio communication systems is too static and thus an obstacle when introducing new systems into the radio spectrum.
There is a need for new ways of spectrum sharing based on a dynamic scalable distribution system capable of handling millions of small networks.
The present invention is intended to open the spectrum gridlock and give an innovative and potential advantage. The solution may release initiatives to modernize spectrum regulation and create business opportunities.
The invention will further improve the wireless Internet experience by reducing interference thereby giving higher user rates more dynamically.
The present invention describes a non-centralized method and system for solving common channel and power allocation of a group of radio devices each performing the same method. The group of radio devices can also cooperate with centrally controlled systems. It can be used on a country/community scale and create an opportunity to launch new radio systems using all frequency bands even if they are currently occupied.
Using the method according to the invention enables coordination between primary and secondary system and coordination between devices in secondary systems is coordinated and solved by the radio devices in a same group.